Robert J. Brocklehurst

The paper examines morphofunctional trends in vertebrate mandibles across extant and extinct taxa, finding clade-specific patterns that challenge the assumption that mandibles reliably reflect feeding modes in deep-time reconstructions.

The paper quantifies how jaw muscle morphology predicts diet in mammals, finding that specific muscle complexes like the medial pterygoid and temporalis are strong dietary predictors.

This study uses adaptive landscapes to analyze 3D humerus shape and function in fossil synapsids and extant species, revealing that the transition to parasagittal posture in mammals was not direct but involved evolutionary flexibility and multiple trait combinations.